Researchers at the Swedish Environmental Research Institute have investigated how different food choices and changing eating habits affect the environment.

The Health Council of the Netherlands (the Dutch Dietary Guidelines Committee 2015) has published an updated set of Dutch dietary guidelines.

This study evaluates the links between diets and health in relation to greenhouse gas emissions by reviewing 16 studies, comparing a total of 100 dietary patterns.  The researchers examine how diets with reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) affected the subjects in the studies in terms of nutrient intake and health outcomes.

This study, which quantifies at the global and regional level the health and environmental consequences of dietary change,  argues that there are substantial health and environmental gains to be made from switching to more plant based diets.  According to the research, food-related emissions could be cut by 29% if global dietary guidelines were adopted. 

The UK’s official dietary guidelines were updated in March 2016. The Carbon Trust has undertaken a useful analysis of the environmental implications of the new plate. FCRN member John Kazer (Footprint Certification Manager at The Carbon Trust) provides the following summary of the analysis here:

Two recent systematic literature reviews conclude that both organic milk and meat contain around 50% more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than conventionally produced products. The team led by Newcastle University, reviewed 196 papers on milk and 67 papers on meat and found clear differences between organic and conventional milk and meat, especially in terms of fatty acid composition, and the concentrations of certain essential minerals and antioxidants.

In a major report, ICROFS (International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems) at Aarhus University, Denmark evaluates the health and environmental impacts of organic versus conventionally farmed foods.

In this paper, researchers from universities in Switzerland, Italy, Austria, the UK and Germany investigate the potential for feeding livestock on less food-competitive feedstuffs (FCF – that is, animal feed derived from fewer human edible food sources) to reduce the negative environmental impacts of livestock farming.